PERSPECTIVES: THE NATURAL AND CONSTRUCTED WORLDS

"SURVIVAL IN THE SOUTH"

A play by Minnie Aodla Freeman

BEFORE READING:

Minnie Aodla Freeman was born in 1936 on the Cape Hope Islands in James Bay, granddaughter of an influential Inuit leader, Weetaltuk.  She grew up in the towns of Moose Factory, Ontario, and Fort George, Quebec, and attended Anglican and Roman Catholic schools.  She moved to Ottawa in 1957 and began work as a translator of the Inuktitut and Cree languages for what was then known as the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources.  Freeman has written numerous poems and short stories, produced numerous documentary films about dimensions of Inuit life, and staged her play Survival in the South at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in 1973.

Survival in the South is an autobiographical play that recounts the story of Freeman's arrival in Ottawa to work as a translator, the extreme cultural shock she experiences, and her gradual adjustment to this alien urban existence. The "other" in this play are the Whites--her roommate, boss, a hairdresser, people on the busy streets, and southern culture, which strikes Freeman as ignorant, insensitive, and frightening. Through the dialogue and the "narrator's" comments, Minnie's perspective of her experience is revealed.